WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Biden administration officials discussed the future of artificial intelligence during a meeting Thursday with a group of executives from OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft and other companies. The focus was on building data centers in the United States and the infrastructure needed to develop the technology.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily briefing that the meeting focused on expanding public-private partnerships and the industry’s needs for staffing and permitting. Computing power for the industry will likely depend on reliable access to electricity, so some utilities also attended the meeting to discuss grid needs.
The rise of AI brings with it a mix of promise and danger: the automatically generated text, images, audio and video can help boost economic productivity, but it also has the potential to displace some workers. It can also serve as both a national security tool and a threat to guard against.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order last October to crack down on the technology’s development, seeking to provide protections through measures such as watermarking AI content and addressing consumer rights concerns.
Present at the meeting on behalf of the administration were White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
